I'll have the "Judy's Salad" please...

I spent 90 minutes or so discussing the current state of the healthcare policy debate with a friend of mine over lunch at Gaby’s Mediterranean on Saturday. That’s no plug… they’re just close to my apartment, I like their food, and generally express myself through hypertext. Anyway, it became an extremely frustrating exercise as I played devil’s advocate to his completely logical and well-intentioned ideas. My argument is that we are facing a situation in which no acceptable healthcare policy will emerge. Whereas Bill Moyers (7:00 mark) feels that we need to push a bill that sacrifices nothing from our most ideal and progressive ideas, I believe such inflexibility would be catastrophic and lead to a conversational roadblock on healthcare policy similar to the fourteen-year lapse from which we just emerged (see Bill Clinton’s first term.) Instead, I see this as an iterative process… a ten-year bridge to acceptable policy (feel free to replace ten with the number of your choice depending on your optimism/pessimism.) We are just not going to do away with the insurance companies this round… and certainly not the pharmaceutical companies either. To fool ourselves into ignoring their power is to be ignorant of the system. As long as congressmen/women are constantly campaigning and candidates are fueled by the same money on both sides, we will not overcome the oppressive corporate framework that controls our government. The two-party system can work – but first, we need two parties.


...just saw this...